Trio Grotesk is Florian Schick’s personal interpretation of Kaart Antieke — an early 20th century sans-serif used by Piet Zwart in his famous, yet never officially published essay about modern typography called ‘Van oude tot nieuwe typografie’.

Trio Grotesk started as a student project for the KABK Type & Media masters course in type design. During a visit to the Meermanno Museum in Den Haag Schick discovered the only two remaining copies of Piet Zwart’s essay. Being struck by the historical value of this booklet, he promptly decided to revive the typeface it was set in.

Florian enlarged and examined the original 7 pt printed typeface in great detail and tried to replicate the printed image of this typeface as faithfully as possible. Certain features which are unique to letterpress printing, such as the roundings of stoke endings and junctions caused by ink spread and pressure, have been preserved.

Trio Grotesk is available in three weights with Latin-extended character-set for broad language support, OpenType features including small caps and seven sets of numerals, as well as arrows, ornaments and dingbats.

A comprehensive type specimen designed by Florian Schick is available for order here.